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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29250075">Kill The Dream</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostdriive/pseuds/ghostdriive'>ghostdriive</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Divine Daughter au continued, F/F, i took Liberties tho, roughly based on ch 41 of HtN, what if i took griddlehark ... and removed some of their childhood trauma</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 11:28:50</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>9,891</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29250075</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostdriive/pseuds/ghostdriive</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>No detail about the progeny of the Kindly Prince had been offered on the pristine page, and you had no chummy friendship of your youth with the other Houses to call upon when your letter arrived.</p><p>Little information was offered beyond this primary task with a dress code to boot.</p><p>The objective? To secure a marital match befitting divinity.</p><p>***</p><p>Amidst a rapidly advancing interstellar war, future Reverend Daughter Harrowhark Nonagesimus hopes to strike a match with God's only child.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus, background camilla hect/coronabeth tridentarius - Relationship</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>43</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. A Silver Lining and A Ripping Seam</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>hello!! this started as an expanded River ball!au that got ... so out of hand... help me...</p><p>beware spoilers for HtN. big thank u to becca for beta-ing this in spite of the general confusion. ily</p><p>harrow's parents (and mortus) are alive in this au - she is still a necromantic genius. gideon has grown up in canaan house as john's daughter under the care of teacher and the other priests. she ... may also be a necromancer :^)</p><p>mwah! okay enjoy !!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The captain flying your ship barked something across the overhead that was interspersed with a burst of panicked static, and Ortus peered at you perched atop your packet of grave dirt with something akin to curiosity. If the speaker spat out meaning, you couldn’t comprehend it. This much he understood plainly.</p><p>You observed his hulking frame as he stood on legs wobbling to tap at the plastic partition between your party of two and the captain of the vessel, all the while gesturing with his hands. The sky of the watery planet of the First was blue and vast and cloudless.</p><p>You absently watched him receive a shrug drowned in nonchalance for a response, and though the look you were met with offered all of his usual apology, Ortus seemed affected by a unique kind of Ortus-grief which you hoped to never bear witness to again.</p><p>You still had ambition that you would see much less of your cavalier than you had in the last three months before departure. Or that midweek might hurry along swiftly, carrying with it Aiglamene, your retinue, and the remains of your sanity.</p><p>The tense silence stretching between you was drowned out by the din of the engine as you breached the atmosphere and the vehicle initiated descent, and then you were experiencing a violent turbulence like a cane about the head. Your brain was porcelain in a sealed bag of plastic, splitting and crushing against itself gracelessly in a compression you were unfamiliar with, and without any desire to experience again.</p><p>Ortus stretched a wobbling hand in your direction, and something in your animal brain snapped like old elastic as your fingers closed around his thumb like a child's.</p><p>Space travel had never been your particular forte; having never left your beloved Castle Drearburh in your two decades of life, how could it be. You suppose you should have forgiven yourself these juvenile mannerisms of your flesh cage in your intense surprise. There were likely to be many, beginning when your booted feet touched the fertile soil of Canaan House. At this moment, you were still not certain what the First House might hold for you.</p><p>Your summons to the House of the First came with Ortus' company as a mandatory postscript, which despite your best wishes, you now had to admit could prove useful to you. The older son of the Drearburh had been a pivotal piece in your private correspondence with the Fifth House, cementing in your mind his worthiness to your hard-earned trust.</p><p>Aiglamene had packed you and he off with your great grandmother's knucklebones and his newly acquired Drearbruh rapier for safety, stuffed to the gills with a promise of the return of abundance to your dwindling population. Your parents had spared you half a glance, lacking any parting words of comfort. Perhaps they found it gauche; you, their one hope for the Ninth, the future Reverend Daughter, fearful at the prospect of interstellar travel. You already missed Crux, nurse of your childhood and the only person who might have spared you a kind word, dearly.</p><p>Knowing you would return home successful to joyous celebration in spite of your ailing, apathetic parents spurred you on. You prayed to the Locked Tomb even as you tumbled down that crisp tunnel of light that you, too, could orchestrate a resurrection, no matter how minor.</p><p>***</p><p>No detail about the progeny of the Kindly Prince had been offered on the pristine page, and you had no chummy friendship of your youth with the other Houses to call upon when your letter arrived.</p><p>Addressed to the Reverend Daughter Harrowhark Nonagesimus, a title you were suspicious of the Emperor’s knowledge of the moment you saw it written in a script foreign to your Drearbruh eyes, the neatly constructed gold lettering was a glorified invitation to a series of ceremonies.</p><p>The week long celebration was to culminate in a ball where the sacred spawn of the Necrolord Prime would name a partner. Little information was offered beyond this primary task with a dress code to boot.</p><p>The objective? To secure a marital match befitting divinity.</p><p>The prize was greater than the task at hand to you so used to the poverty of your little home: the House or Houses successful would enter into an equal partnership with the House of the First, receiving utmost protection from the Emperor in the war's steady advancement.</p><p>You did not feel guilt at assuming such a place you did not belong - you probably didn't think you would make it as far as the seat of the Emperor anyway.</p><p>But you were compelled to try.</p><p>A prospect so incredible with so small a cost as your hand in marriage could not meet resistance from any of the more abundant Houses under the Necrolord Prime's guidance, and no House needed protection more than the Locked Tomb's native own.</p><p>Your people would want for nothing evermore. The only glaring issue you could perceive was the expectation placed on you to forge a kind of lifelong friendship with the heirs to the other Houses - luckily for you, you had started on the latter rather recently.</p><p>Your heart had flitted at the very notion of restoring the Ninth to an abundance it enjoyed before the limits of your memory, and you had accepted and returned the ornate letter before the Reverend Mother or Father had caught wind of its arrival. Their apathy saddened you, though no more than usual, and you had beheld the joy of genuine paper in your own gloved hands. Nothing could quite dampen your spirits.</p><p>Nothing, until the moment your syrupy idiot brain recalled the fact that you would be attended by the cavalier primary and the cavalier primary alone for the first three days.</p><p>You anticipated Ortus Nigenad might make for himself a friend in the First House; some dull companion who would share his determined passion for the spoken word, leaving you to attend to your tasks, both sanctioned and heretical, in peace. You could only hope.</p><p>***</p><p>Your crash landing on the Emperor's home might have been mortifying, had anyone been in the vicinity to perceive it. The captain realigned the steering and bolted from the House of the First before you could think to ask for directions to the castle.</p><p>For the first and perhaps only time, you were glad to were alone with Ortus for some time.</p><p>You children of the Ninth had landed in a clearing near a worn down patch in the grass that could, reasonably, be mistaken for a path. Being out in such a bright, open landscape struck jagged horror into your heart, and you stole nervous glances in Ortus' direction more often than you would like to admit.</p><p>If his baleful black eyes noticed your erratic glances, he did not acknowledge it. For this, you found yourself grateful.</p><p>As you walked adjacent to the makeshift path, never touching it, you began to recognise the kind of thalergetic signature unique to another necromancer. A powerful necromancer.</p><p>Your hackles rose instinctually before it struck you to likely be another House pair journeying to the castle. It seemed to sit so far in the distance from where your ship had deposited you.</p><p>The duo were indeed following a path parallel to yours, at a similar pace, and if you strained your ears you could almost make out the low drone of two people in sporadic conversation. The adept was stalked closely by the second heat source, who was smaller and more compact in stature insofar as you could tell. The cavalier had a kind of quickness in their step which the necromancer's loping gait lacked, and almost as soon as you motioned for Ortus to stop, the pair halted their weaving through the forest, too.</p><p>"Who's there?" You demanded of the low hanging trees to the northeast of where you stood. Your voice held none of the particularly fearful inflection seizing at your heart.</p><p>Ortus remained blessedly quiet, but closed the distance between you and he in a quicker step than before, one hand poised at the hilt of his rapier. You supposed his height made up for his overall lack of intimidation, but his pacifism would not save your life now if it came to it. You worried a chip of bone from the shell of your left ear, slowly, poised like a snake ready to strike.</p><p>Then the other set of people began to move once more, the necromancer no longer strolling, in your direction. You held your ground with your nose pointed skyward, preparing for a first encounter rougher than your impromptu arrival on the First. In the distance, a wave crashed against the sandy shore, and you tasted salt on the breeze that kicked your salivary glands into useless action.</p><p>Two grey clad figures stepped into view simultaneously, and you found yourself shocked to be facing two of the most mundane looking people you had ever beheld in your short life. Had the gangly one not been as rail thin as you, you may have mistaken the smaller, dark haired person for the adept between them. The taller of the two had a stern expression perpetually gracing his features, with comically thick glass lenses protecting a set of clear grey eyes. It was he who spoke first.</p><p>"Palamedes Sextus, Warden of the Sixth House," he said to you both in an almost inaudible mumble. Then, like a wild hog, he outstretched one large hand and clasped your own hand in his long fingered grip. He shook your entire arm up and down twice, and repeated the gesture with Ortus, who had gone even more silent than before. "We spoke only briefly in Abigail’s letters. I engineered the, erm, scattered arrival of the Houses. Your royal script fits you to a tee - I am to assume you the heir to the house of the Ninth, right?"</p><p>This he addressed to you with the still vibrating arm.</p><p>A curt nod was all you trusted yourself to give Sextus, but Ortus had found his voice. "It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I am Ortus Nigenad, cavalier primary to the royal family of the Ninth House, and you are in the presence of the Reverend Daughter Lady Harrowhark, Keeper of the Locked Tomb." His tone was a more confident tremor than you had ever heard him utilise at the pew or in the library.</p><p>"Lovely stuff," the Warden said with a nod indicating his cavalier. “This is Camilla.”</p><p>Camilla was upending a bag in an apparently futile search for something inside. Each object she removed was passed promptly to Sextus, who made no attempt to explain her actions. The stack of equipment piling in his arms awkwardly looked ready to tumble to the floor.</p><p>"A pleasure," offered the cavalier, Camilla, distracted as she ruffled through the bag. When she found her target, which appeared to be a folded sheet of flimsy mapping the area in great detail, she held the bag open for her necromancer to return each object with careful precision. Camilla said no more, and the Sixth set off walking toward the sea, leaving you, puzzled, to follow.</p><p>***</p><p>When your legs had caught you up with Sextus’ loping strides, your brow was damp with exertion, and you were glad of your thick lace veil to hide beneath despite the high light of Dominicus.</p><p>Your fellow necromancer fared no better in his sweat dampened greys, but Camilla seemed unfazed by the unrelenting heat. Between her hands she twisted the flimsy as you approached the intersection of your individual routes.</p><p>At the point where eight paths connected stood a gate even Palamedes could not see above. It was both alike and unnervingly unfamiliar to your home.</p><p>"I must admit," you began in a steady and rehearsed cadence, "I expected a more formal reception from the House of the First." One corner of Camilla's mouth had quirked at your indignation, and internally you cringed down to your very toes. "Are we to create the puzzles ourselves, too?"</p><p>Camilla was staring at you very evenly. You realised she was no taller than you, but that her compact stature had given your brain the illusion of height. She looked sturdy. "She didn't she write to Drearburh?"</p><p>You, on the other hand, were thoroughly unbalanced.</p><p>"She?" Ortus ventured timidly, and you readied yourself to pass off the ignorance as his sin to bear. Your heart sped a rhythm that rendered your tongue insensate in the cavernous tomb of your mouth.</p><p>"The Divine Daughter. She lives here alone," Sextus explained with patience, fiddling noiselessly with a metal box labelled POST.</p><p>He had to stoop to look through the hole that was almost level with your line of sight, much to your embarrassment. "Blank. Must have a cloth or something draped across it from the inside. The old skeletons put the challenges together, she said.” This he added as an afterthought for your benefit.</p><p>Camilla was unhooking two keys, marked VI and IX respectively, from a worn slot in the metal gate next to a perfectly key shaped space. "She called them bullshit pretences to keep her Dad happy."</p><p>Through clenched teeth the dark haired woman told you this, unaware of the scratching in your chest. Camilla held the flimsy between her lips in a compact, perfectly folded square. Her speech was not impeded when she continued, “her words, not mine. I wouldn't worry too much about a passing grade, though."</p><p>Camilla the Sixth placed the Ninth key in Ortus' doughy hand, and slid the former into the opaque hole with an efficient click.</p><p>Intrigue had gripped you body and soul, and you fought with your own facial muscles to retain composure.</p><p>You were operating under the assumption the Emperor had issued each invitation himself, and felt now the sharp, immature twist of being left out of a conversation. You didn't know this child of God beyond a rudimentary knowledge of her existence; how could you expect yourself to form a working relationship with her when you had never even conversed.</p><p>A countdown from ten steadied your nerves and quelled the rage you swore would not best you here.</p><p>"I never have," you all but whispered, mind fully occupied by your distant and dying planet. What other archaic secrets of the social world had you missed out on in your first twenty years holed up in Drearburh?</p><p>***</p><p>The opening foyer of the castle you had to climb a hundred steps to reach was airy and spacious, with an open doorway to the left and a vacant throne to the right. Lining the walls were the bones of the truest Cohort heroes revered, their sunken skulls wrapped and tied carefully with a sash denoting their affiliation.</p><p>There were no black sashes present in the entrance hall. You were not at all surprised to realise this.</p><p>An idle whistle sounded melodically from the open frame just west of your party.</p><p>Sextus inclined his head in the direction of a man ancient enough to rival your own dwindling population. He moved about the kitchen with none of the slowness of a child of the Ninth; you envied his zest for life.</p><p>You felt the old feeling that gummed up the atria of your youthful heart: Drearburh was a viscous graveyard.</p><p>Two women, dressed in identically pristine Cohort whites, stood to attention. If not for the cavalier's rapier, you would not have known the necromancer from the swordswoman immediately. You generously guessed she was a middling necromancer.</p><p>“Captain Judith Deuteros,” intoned the first woman, the one without the rapier. Your competition.</p><p>“Lieutenant Marta Dyas,” the second woman echoed crisply. Neither moved from their position across the room.</p><p>You doubted the adept would put up much of a fight in this competition - the Second were known to even the Ninth for their marriage to the battlefield. Likely, they were here to gather intel on you all and personally guard the sacred body of the Empire's child.</p><p>Palamedes issued his introduction, and you cut across Ortus, eager to assert yourself. You had not introduced yourself to a stranger in many years, and you had recovered from the initial shock of meeting people your age. Exhilarated, you gave your full title to the Cohort officers.</p><p>The whistling priest with the rainbow sash hurried in from the left as the Ninth and the Sixth deposited their few possessions on the floor. No one made an attempt at small talk. The little priest beamed at your assembled group. </p><p>"We welcome you, young heirs of the Empire, to Canaan House. We wish you luck in your journey and joy in the process. We have one rule here, and it is a simple one: there are no rules!”</p><p>He guffawed in the wake of his attempt at hilarity, entirely lost on this particular set of people.</p><p>“The Lord’s heir will be present at the ball this evening. I have been told to insist you all prepare by arriving with an empty stomach and your dancing shoes on.”</p><p>In the midst of his little speech, your eye was disturbed by a gaudy triptych of jewellery moving up the steps of Canaan House.</p><p>Two blonde women paraded up the steep incline in steady conversation with one another. The man taking up the rear of their opulent trio was laden down with bags enough for a month's stay.</p><p>You took an immediate distaste to the cavalier's pout, but disregarded the twin necromancers - and they were twins in spite of the sun and moon difference between them - as superficial. The butter haired twin looked bored out of her mind, while the golden one took centre stage under a window in the foyer.</p><p>These women were title-holders, spoiled and waited on all their lives, not talent genuine. While their thalergetic signature was indeed stronger than the average adept, being doubled, you doubted their ability. Certainly no threat.</p><p>Still, when the sunny one spoke, each head in that space turned to listen to her.</p><p>"Announcing the arrival of the Crown Princesses of Ida. I am an honoured guest in your abode, dearest Lord. Coronabeth Tridentarius, the first of my name," she bowed gracefully. "Miss Ianthe Tridentarius, my twin sister and other half." Here Coronabeth paused for effect. Or, maybe, she had forgotten the prescribed words which came next.</p><p>After a cough from the cavalier, she piped up once more. "Naberius Tern, esteemed royal cavalier." Unless the category on which you would be judged was external beauty, the Third would pose no danger to your mission.</p><p>The little priest repeated his welcome along with the evening plans to the Third while the prior occupants of the room peered at you and the librarians where you had taken up residence against the wall for a hard second, before turning and leaving in perfect military formation, apparently satisfied with their scrutiny. They hadn't even introduced themselves to the royals. You dismissed the Second there and then in that open space.</p><p>The sash clad priest merrily informed your mixed bag group that the afternoon was yours alone to reorient and recuperate for the evening ball. Fearing further attempts at socialisation from the Sixth House, you motioned for Ortus to follow and fled that foyer without a glance behind you.</p><p>***</p><p>The Ninth quarters were composed of three rooms more spacious than you had even seen the likes of before. Adorned with candles in each crevice and rich silken sheets on the bed, you were struck by the enormous wealth on display at Canaan House.</p><p>You ached; one week more and all of this would be shared among the people of Drearburh. You left Ortus to his own preparations and shut your door behind you.</p><p>Stripped of your Skull, your skin was pale to the point of unhealthiness. You had not slept overly well in preparation for this trip, and it showed in the shadows darkened beneath your black eyes.</p><p>You figured a short rest would remediate this, but you had time not for relaxation. There was work to be done.</p><p>First, you wrote to the House of the Fifth informing them of your arrival. You had no idea what to expect of them, and no way of telling if they had arrived yet or not. Ortus delivered this to their designated room within the hour.</p><p>You surveyed the room broadly for camera devices or other surveillance equipment. Each frame, be it door, chair, or bed, you afforded a closer visual once over.</p><p>You were still and silent in your movements for a moment; no electric buzz hummed in that room. The only sound was the ticking of a device with two hands forming a vertical line across the face. It appeared to tell the time, if your studies on the First were to be believed; you didn’t know how to read it.</p><p>Assured of your privacy, you turned to the light of the sun streaming warmly through the glass above the bed. The view from your new bedroom window was of the same coastline you had followed to arrive here, stretching beyond the limits of your sight. You could not see the front gardens from your room, and so felt comfortable pinning back the heavy curtains as you worked.</p><p>A note to the Sixth was checked off next on your mental list of tasks. You stored this in the draped sleeve of your sash to distribute on your way to meet the Fifth. You exchanged your boots for heeled pumps and your thick gloves for a thinner lace pair that covered the arm right to the elbow.</p><p>Once you had reapplied your paint carefully, you stepped quietly out into the corridor housing the Ninth quarters to find the designated spot. Ortus knew where you would be, should an emergency occur, and you timed your steps to the staccato pace of your heart.</p><p>Pent’s directions were precise and, more importantly, correct. Soon, you had arrived at a plain wooden door in a corridor open to the elements.</p><p>This was an older segment of Canaan House - here and there, sections of the wall were crumbling to a fine dust like the grains of sand in an hourglass.</p><p>The door to the meeting room was indeed notched along the bottom by a line, just as the Fifth had indicated it would be. Using a code you had not devised yourself, clues were more difficult to unravel. When you knocked the unique knock of eight fast beats and a ninth slow one, the door swivelled open and you were all but yanked inside.</p><p>The smiling face of Sir Magnus Quinn, Abigail’s husband and cavalier, welcomed you to a room containing a long table lined by stiff backed chairs. At the head sat his necromancer, and she was surrounded by two women and a smattering of paper on the table.</p><p>All three were endowed with necromantic talent which flared like a thalergetic halo around their little congregation. You had never been in the presence of such power. It cleaved your heeled feet to the floor momentarily.</p><p>One of the women, you noticed in this haze, reclined in a chair quite unlike the rest. There were four bespoked circles total on the adapted seat, two under either arm which allowed the woman movement wherever she desired.</p><p>She glanced up at your entrance, and then smiled a smile like the setting of the sun. “Duchess Dulcinea Septimus,” she said in a voice tinged with relief. She waved you over to sit next to her, but you were distracted by your own desires.</p><p>You could think of more than a few Niners who might thrive with such a device. Your head filled with an image of your people, cared for like someone had for this woman. The dizzying reality of what you were about to achieve blurred your sight again in a rush of emotion.</p><p>You had to pull yourself together. Closing your eyes, you coaxed forward the voice of your father from your childhood. <i>All I do, I do for the Ninth. </i>You imagined yourself saying these words aloud. You were calm when your eyes opened again.</p><p>To Pent’s left was a plain looking woman who spared you not a look. Her hair was a crop of shocking red, and she didn’t raise her head from her writing even when Lady Pent addressed you.</p><p>“Harrow.” Abigail spoke warmly, as though you two were old friends. “You look well. Do have a seat. We have so much to fill you in on.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Rehearsing What's Reality</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>A ball, a bad fall avoided, and the beginnings of a love story.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>thank u lovelies for the comments and the interest!! updates might slow down even further as college season ramps up.</p><p>tw for mentions of alcohol, depictions of drunkenness, and ianthe tridentarius</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Your head swam with the vastness of newfound knowledge not yet devoured. The Duchess Septimus regarded you with all the kindness from before, even with your open-fish mouth gawping. Digestion was not even close to beginning for you.</p><p>Abigail Pent had divulged the secret family tree of the Necrolord Prime with the kind of formality one might award indecent gossip, and you were struggling with your comprehension.</p><p>Your Lord’s daughter was the girl with fire red hair, no older than you at twenty and two, sitting beside Lady Pent. A product of a spoiled extramarital relation, Gideon Gaius had been squirreled off to the empty planet of the First and left to guard a decaying House her father had also abandoned. In that time, she nursed a festering welt of hatred for the man who had become God, and you were only slightly less dismayed to learn this sentiment was shared unanimously among the other Houses. God was not a popular man.</p><p>From the corner of your eye, you perceived Gideon as she smiled at you, blindingly, and you had to turn your head sharply to avoid catching it. That kind of fever was contagious. You would need to steer clear of any interaction with her since learning of her divine heritage - her plainness was infuriating, and frankly, it upset you greatly.</p><p>Your upcoming marriage needed to be practical, entirely divorced from emotion. Every new interaction ran the chance of sullying this. If you had to convince even God that you were going to give his daughter an heir to protect his (and your) precious Tomb, you had to look like you at least wanted to.</p><p>"So," you began after a very long stretch of time, then promptly stopped yourself. You stood up to pace, only to find you could not move from your seat. Your legs were all skin and no bone beneath you. You resigned yourself to the plush seat while you waded through the waters of your mind. "Allow me to rephrase your request, Lady Pent. What you are asking me, in truth, is to partake in an act of divine heresy."</p><p>Your heartbeat was echoing like a premonition in your ears. Surely every body present could hear you as you thundered.</p><p>"To the extreme," came Abigail's too cheerful reply amidst this chaos. "Why, we’re going to defy God, Reverend Daughter. We are all getting out of here."</p><p>***</p><p>Not quite knowing what to do with yourself, you scurried off to the Sixth in a daze. Their quarters were placed in a corridor on the same level as your own, a convenience you might have attributed to Sextus’ ceaseless practicality. He seemed keen to make an ally of you; you had no reason to mistrust him.</p><p>Their door was shut tight, and no noise leaked from beneath. You figured it would be safe to slip the letter under the door, follow it with a weeny construct, arrange it neatly on a low table, and bolt from the premises with great haste.</p><p>As luck would have it, the Sixth were home. Camilla pulled open the door without a sound to find you crouched at her feet, where the flimsy had crumpled in your attempt to shove it through her door.</p><p>“Never speak of this again,” you warned, stalking past her. You were in a wallpapered hallway with three doors, setting up a perfect mirror image of the Ninth residence. You snatched the note up and handed it to her while she muttered in delayed agreement. “Where’s Sextus?”</p><p>“You called?” Palamedes appeared with a shaving knife in one hand and a towel slung around the other, foam coating the lower portion of his face. Disgusted at his lack of preparation, you addressed the cavalier in her perfectly organised state.</p><p>“I have just found myself sitting down with Her D- with Gideon.” You stuttered over her name, and spoke in tones slow and deliberate to counter your brisk, arrhythmic internal state.</p><p>When Camilla only nodded, you continued somewhat recklessly. “Pent told me all that had transpired in my … absence. Her Highness, Gideon, is - she’s just another girl! A young woman. I am afraid I can no longer do what I came to do, for I am going to fail all of you, miserably.” The Sixth were statues in the face of your naked desperation. “I cannot be worthy.”</p><p>“Harrow, if I may,” Palamedes interjected with great calmness, but you were only half listening to him in favour of wildly spiralling on the inside. “All we are, each one of us, is a piece of an ancient puzzle that no one really understands. Gideon is no different, and though it would pain her sorely to hear me say so, she’s no more powerful than you.”</p><p>“We all have a part to play,” Camilla assured you, but there was a distance in her tone that betrayed something alive and beating hard. For the first time, you questioned their intentions.</p><p>The mug she had passed you smelled so strongly of vegetation that your nose scrunched involuntarily, but the heat breathed a new life into your trembling fingers. If they were out to destroy you and the Ninth in kind, it would not happen today.</p><p>“Is that so, Hect?” She smiled patiently at you, and the uncanny resemblance between her and Palamedes struck you painfully. There seemed an unfathomable familial closeness between them which tore at your throat to contemplate.</p><p>You had been alone for so long in your life that friendship was a vague and murky concept you didn’t trust, but sitting there in an armchair surrounded by pleasant strangers warmed you. With the smell of old books and sweet lavender wafting through the air, you dozed off into a shallow, dreamless sleep.</p><p>***</p><p>Waking from your impromptu nap was terrifying, but blessedly, you were alone. A butterfly of flimsy was sitting on the arm of your chair informing you in a neat script that the Sixth had left early. You had been instructed to lock the door behind you after you left.</p><p>In your quarters, Ortus rested on a divan. His leather bound poetry collection had been discarded in sleep. You slipped off your outer cloak to signify your return, clattered off the party shoes in the hall, and sat for a moment against the inside of your bedroom door.</p><p>All you had worshipped for your life - all the Ninth House had worshipped since her inception - was a fabrication. This reality hurt less than the realisation that God was just a man, and not even a particularly good one at that. The knowledge that you would soon flee all he had made unsettled you deeply.</p><p>A tap on your window shattered the reverie and saved you from a doomed spiral of your own induction. Annoyed but only vaguely, you rose to draw the heavier drapes against the noise of the First. A flash of fire stopped you.</p><p>In the distance, the great rays of Dominicus were beginning to fall over the ocean in a trail that blazed against your eyes. Closer to you, a freckled, brown arm waved madly up at you for your attention. When another stony shard landed on the lip of the window, you stretched on tiptoe to wiggle at the handle attaching the glass to the frame.</p><p>It took all your upper body strength to heave the window open. Once ajar, an evening gust like the warmest of days on Drearburh rushed in. You hooked your left foot into a notch above the bed and pushed up with your right foot until you were straddling the windowsill. The fall was dizzying; you closed your eyes against a wave of sudden nausea.</p><p>“Down here!” Disoriented still, you held fast with your hands and carefully edged both legs out of the room, where you now faced the water and Gideon. “Jump, you scrawny chickenshit!”</p><p>You, the scrawny chickenshit, did not jump. You gathered the pebbles waiting on the window’s edge in your hand meditatively, if only for something to do, and contemplated the extent of the damage of the fall. Bones could be easily mended, but looking like a fool?</p><p>“I will not jump, thank you very much.” Your voice was a squeak even to your own ears. You blamed your haughtiness on terror, mentally preparing for a landing that would hurt but ultimately heal. “Some of us value our lives.” You returned the stones shakily, your resolution growing.</p><p>Gideon shrugged and readied another rock for launching. The gardens were quiet and cool, and she looked so at ease amongst the carefully tended greenery. It would be so easy to join her. This last piece of stone she propelled into a nearby fountain, where it skipped across the water gleefully.</p><p>Like a discarded eyelash, you shut your eyes and wished on this rock with all of your might.</p><p>But Gideon had turned on her heel and left you watching, waiting.</p><p>***</p><p>From your vantage point on the outskirts of the dining hall, you guessed Camilla Hect of the Sixth had an open view of the Divine Daughter dipping the gaudy Crown Princess of Ida low in the centre of the ballroom. You could see only the mingled shine of their heads under the dimmed lights as one whispered prettily for the other’s amusement.</p><p>You found yourself hot to the tips of your ears, covered blessedly under the veil Ortus had pinned in place for you. Had you been exposed, the colour would have surely earned you a right chuckle from either of the Fifth. Or, the sharper knife: a knowing smile. At least the Sixth were otherwise occupied.</p><p>Camilla's eyes were taut on the couple in motion even as she moved, trained as the fine lines of muscle tracing her single exposed arm. Her knife was concealed in the one sleeve of her jumpsuit, which you thought was a tasteful if mildly excessive amount of skin on display for someone only poorly disguised as a party-goer. Then again, Camilla blended into the edges of the crowd with desired effect, and had the capacity to kill at a moment’s notice if needed, which was one thing more than you could boast.</p><p>Her necromancer stood watching the floor with his head inclined towards Her Highness from a balcony. Abigail deemed it appropriate to remove you both from the dancefloor during this welcoming celebration, under the guise of ‘saving you until you were needed’. Sextus had been placed lower in height and closer to the Divine Daughter than you, but you figured this was less by choice and more, no doubt, to counter his horrendous myopic vision. Under the gleam of the chandeliers, his bottle thick lenses reflected so much light they would rob even the most talented spirit magician of their vision.</p><p>You weren’t certain what it was you would be needed for at this mixer, and remained on high alert as you stood waiting alone, sipping daintily at the burgundy liquid in your glass. It was the same glass handed to you upon arrival by another fluid, rainbow sashed construct; you drank it at a snail’s pace, afraid of the consequences that might surge after the alcohol.</p><p>Palamedes was about as useful to this mission as the nine course meal you would be expected to choke down later was to you, and you feared you were of equal merit, but weaving effortlessly through the throng of bodies, Camilla the Sixth proved herself no fool.</p><p>You should have known better than to question the Warden's Hand on her train of thought - she had a stable body as well as a sound mind. Also, your cavalier had been bested by her in myriad ways on too many an occasion already, which was to say any occasion at all.</p><p>Your bone mule sat patiently still among the Fifth House delegation at their already crowded table. For a man so prone to nervousness, Ortus looked fatally calm, amiable even from the moment you both had been settled there by Lady Pent and her husband. You could see Magnus verbally jousting your up-and-coming Ninth poet cavalier with more success than either would have displayed with a rapier.</p><p>You had to assume the Fifth's surprising interest in your house did not, in fact, reside in your cavalier, but rather in the dark and enigmatic ecclesiastic practises of your House. Born to a nun of extreme devotion even by your standards, Ortus would surely have a tale or two to delight. Unlike you, he offered his stories readily.</p><p>Guilt speared your heart at the consideration of your newly tested faith. For so many years you had stooped low on pews and stood tall on alters alike, with sacred words of devotion never far from tongue or mind.</p><p>The same religion you had to recently cast aside in arriving here and in mingling with the child of the Necrolord Prime, only to find her so dissimilar to the version of her residing in your imagination.</p><p>Nonetheless, you questioned neither the knowing eyes of Lady Pent nor her smiling idiot husband-cavalier. She exuded competence to you; her movements were practiced and easy to the eye relatively untrained in deceit. You trusted the aura about her without question, in the way one might trust their own feet, which was only mildly ironic to you. After all, you were on the winning side of her plotting.</p><p>Having scant knowledge of the Fifth couple beyond those brief encoded letters you exchanged and your earlier revelations, and it being your first time out of House in any capacity, you gave no great protest to their gentle persuasion of the Ninth delegation.</p><p>You were to be stationed at the apex of the hall, departing on the signal of her two fingered wave with approximately zero knowledge of what it was you were to do. Once her signal found its poised target, you excused yourself politely from the table at large in search of a restroom.</p><p>The wretched lot of the Fourth stared slack jaw at you as you crept up from the table, perhaps assuming you hitherto lacked the capacity to speak. Ortus had affected the Skull of Desolation for tonight, which you hoped might entertain them more than your absence; it was painted in a hand you were both envious of and well pleased by. He passed you the briefest smile, as if he shared a secret you were now privy to.</p><p>As you rose, you could not help locking eyes with the cool stare of Ianthe Tridentarius, an act which froze your answering frown and transformed it into one of grim horror.</p><p>The larger Third twin was a lone figure hovering by the open doorway in a violet silk gown that hung ostentatiously from her shoulders. It thinned her collarbones and blanched her skin the colour of old bone. The moment she spotted you in that over decorated First House ballroom, she sneered and blew the smoke of her cigarette at you from a curl in her lip as you stated her down across the space.</p><p>The pang of missing home hit you full and heavy in the smoky haze of an atmosphere enshrouding her, so like the one you had grown up surrounded by, and if your eyes watered you hoped your pointed cough would explain it. Your only unadorned finger, the middle one as it happened, separated from your fist as though buoyed by a will of its own.</p><p>Before either of you could utter the verbal insult you so longed to pay one another despite the distance, Ianthe's sister pulled away from stage centre, and the music seemed to swell in preparation for a second dance. You hurried yourself out from her trajectory. For this new piece, Coronabeth was treading in a jaunty step to the very edge of the room while Gideon feasted her eyes; Camilla was conveniently standing right where Corona stopped.</p><p>You made your way up the grand staircase in a gait slowed by caution and curiosity equally. Their fingers touched in the briefest of moments as Camilla steadied the teetering Crown Princess, and you released a breath you hadn’t realised you were holding. Whatever Camilla had executed, it was precisely as she intended. You watched her stow something carefully up her sleeve by way of indication.</p><p>Peaking over the room entire, you beheld the teens wobbling small fruits encased in a jellied substance on spoons. A swell of music assaulted your ears, and you observed with absolutely no amusement as the girl's sugar sodden food trembled and dived back into her bowl, shocked. The Fifth were doing an excellent approximation of ignoring the rest of the room to chide the youngsters on their lack of table manners.</p><p>Had you paid any less attention to detesting the taller Third House twin, perhaps you might have realised the Fifth had assumed parentage of the young Fourth house scion and his cavalier before you sat at their jammed table. The pair were clad in so much metal jewellery you assumed they were hosting a punk afterparty to which you had not received an invitation.</p><p>You wondered how the Fifth planned to restrain the children from the dessert table for the remainder of the trip, let alone undertake such a heretic mission in earnest with toddlers in tow. They had the kind of smiling faces best suited to teachers or medics, but they at least donned the most ordinary plain garments of a complimentary chestnut colour. Such a colour was unlikely to contribute to your growing headache from the overly loud overhead lights.</p><p>You cast your thoughts aside, disturbed by a cry that rose up in the hall. The thunderous roar of applause was so great it hummed through your body like live electricity. By now, you had ascended to the top tier of the hall, and had an excellent image of the whole room. Coronabeth bowed low to her kindly dance partner, her eyes a twinkling lavender as she turned in your direction and pranced back to a table housing her sullen cavalier.</p><p>The Third had been placed near the Seventh, who were absent from the table but had left their purses and shawls displayed there for no reason you could ascertain; and the Second, neither of whom had bothered to show up to the introductory dinner. You assumed this was less an affront against Gideon, and more in protest to Abigail’s shenanigans. You had no inkling of the military presence of the Second in your own life, and would have to wait longer to assess their usefulness, if such a thing existed.</p><p>The Fourth boy hopped up next to partner with Her Holiness; your late arrival had not bordered on rudeness quite yet, though you imagined Gideon’s willingness to dance with the outer Houses might peter out somewhere around the Eighth. Yours would too. The Fourth necromancer lacked all of the confidence and most of the grace Coronabeth brandished as he assumed his place on the floor, but he was beaming as Her Holiness slapped palms with him.</p><p>You watched Sextus watching Camilla as she glided about the outskirts of the ballroom in a passing shadow. She paused and bent at the Third table to whisper something into the shell of Corona's jewel studded ear, and dodged a swat in return for her efforts of the Princess' ringed hand. With the outline of a smile, Camilla continued her own choreographed movement, sparing the pallid Eight at their otherwise empty table a visit. Once again, you found yourself a judge too quick in your mental critique of her route; it struck you that she intended to look determined in her path, not aimless.</p><p>Your attention had shifted slightly from the Divine Daughter and her tussle with Isaac. You realised you were not the only person with lazer focus on Camilla; the Eighth House adept, who you had never seen before this moment but knew instantly from his overbearing whites and general air of disdain, was tracking her every movement.</p><p>At some point, the Duchess Septimus had been wheeled in her chair by her cavalier in the direction of Silas and his enormous nephew. She seemed to be initiating a conversation with the men, waving her pale green veined hands like flags in the wind as she spoke. Finally, they bit, with twin sighs visible even at your height above them. The Eighth was drawn momentarily toward her; the Duchess indicated for her cavalier to sit, and whipped from the purse on her lap a deck of old playing cards. She promptly shuffled and split the cards evenly between the four, hands still fluttering delicately around her cards.</p><p>The Eighth exchanged the briefest of looks, the kind which smacked of resignation to a fate worse than death, and began to organise their little pile of cards, disgusted.</p><p>When the Duchess looked up from her hand after a moment of pause in the entertainment, she locked eyes with you and batted her eyelid in a private wink. Her cap of curls bounced around her head in a mockery of Corona’s bouffant, and you swore for a moment she glowed with all of the light of Dominicus.</p><p>Though you were all on your respective paths, you felt some great sense of unity in the room. Perhaps you really would be receiving that afterparty invite by the end of the night.</p><p>***</p><p>The apocalypse was upon you within the hour. All peace had been destroyed by a single beam of light, searching you out savagely. A request to dance would prove your untimely ending.</p><p>In that high and floating space, you had met your end in the form of sweet deception. It had kissed you square on the mouth like a lover and poisoned you fatally. You never signed up for a dance; the watching eyes were petrifying. A spotlight illuminated your eyes, too wide in your face, and you looked up boldly at the Divine Daughter’s request. She had a fair few inches on you in spite of the heeled pumps you wore.</p><p>Every pair of eyes in that hot, collapsing star of a room was fixated on a combination of you and her. Dancing. Together. She had called your name and your body sang in response. Smooth was the timbre of her voice, placid her features, and you were mesmerised by the stark beauty of the only child of the Empire. She led you around the room slowly with an undemanding gait, your hand in hers, exactly as you were so afraid she would.</p><p>Gideon repeated your name, invitingly, and this time it was just for you. It hurt you to look at her face, though you were compelled to.</p><p>She had an incredibly fine face to be regarding this close. Gideon's jaw was set with cocky firmness, but her broad grin offset what could have been an otherwise utterly douchebag face. This woman knew who she was to her core, and when she beheld you in that claustrophobic space, she saw right through the elegantly painted skull staining your skin and down, down into the chambers of your lightless Drearburh heart.</p><p>How had you convinced yourself you could belong here in the arms of this woman? Your devotion to the Ninth was limitless, and to your God once the same. Yet, when face to face with the filial offering of the Empire, despite each knowing of your arranged betrothal, you found you could not compete. No mere mortal could.</p><p>Still, you smiled a fool’s smile at her, your painted lip splitting with the new stiffness of your face, all because you simply could not help it. She metamorphosed out of plainness in an instant: her perfect lips stretched over perfect teeth, and there you fell in love with God's daughter, the immortal heir to the Seat of the Empire. Fuck.</p><p>She had a hand held palm to the sky for your taking, and so you grasped it and stepped away from her on the polished wood floor. You mourned the loss of her warmth in those few seconds of absence. Your legs were the legs of a newborn deer, and returning to her felt like falling into a large, downy cushion, the likes of which you were so unaccustomed to.</p><p>When Gideon softly dragged your lace clad fingers to press against her very full smile, the rate of your heartbeat spiked mortifyingly. You were swept backwards in her lean arms before you could turn yourself, panicked, and as you danced pressed against Her Divine Highness, the rest of the room fell to nothingness.</p><p>"Harrowhark," she said as she leaned in, ghosting by your ear, making you shudder. "How glad I am to see your bitchy little face."</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p>Eventually, the moment between you shattered. It had to.</p><p>You plummeted out of Gideon's orbit like a dead star drained of thalergy, all the way back to the table housing the impressed Fifth and the awestruck Fourth. Dimly, you registered the whisperings of the teens either side of you, who seemed almost as delighted for you as they were envious. Ortus shot you a smile across the empty plates that disintegrated the paint on his mouth even further - he had been on the wine far more liberally than you, which you figured might have to change from this very moment - and even the gaze of Abigail and Magnus seemed approving in your rose tinted world.</p><p>You beamed and took a new glass to your mouth. The world was ever so slightly tilting as you sat, swimming yet motionless, among company you could no longer categorise as strange. You were aware of your own growing inebriation in that steady and invisible way of a tree climbing through the cracks in a building’s foundation. It no longer scared you.</p><p>At some point the Sixth joined your table, and the Fifth made their rounds hand in hand, and the Duchess arrived with her cav and her cards. You could not plot these points of time on a graph if your life depended on it. The Third even wandered over midway through a violent game of snap between Jeannemary and Isaac, who were both cackling breathlessly, too unfocussed to focus on winning.</p><p>The sprightly priest from earlier in the day took centre stage as evening waned into night with sincere thanks to you all for your commitment to the event. After two spoonfuls of rice and a measly smattering of uncooked leaves and several well filled glasses of blood wine, you were just lucid enough to notice the Third twins had regrouped somewhere in the corner, yet not sober enough to lipread the words they spoke in a conniving manner. Coronabeth flaunted a goodbye wave at you when she noticed your attention; thankfully, Camilla standing behind you caught it instead.</p><p>You received a pat on the shoulder from Hect as you all retired to your respective rooms a deep breath of time later. Sextus even caught your elbow with a gentle grip and murmured "nice work", which left you overwhelmed by one more newfound emotion. You were getting good at recognising them now.</p><p>"Time for bed?" Hect, saint in disguise as a regular woman, linked an arm with you and her necromancer each. You felt one of the knives you knew she kept in her belt press into your side as you leaned the entirety of your admittedly negligible weight into her. She, at least, seemed to have a smidge more tolerance to the alcohol that was besting you.</p><p>You and Ortus were escorted to your very bedroom doors, but from there Camilla allowed you privacy, insisting she must get back to her own quarters. She pulled an object from the loop of her belt and when she opened her hand to wave farewell to you, in it you saw the metal wink of a key.</p><p>You were so unused to a dignity as great as privacy; you rejoiced in having a space that was yours alone. When she left the corridor she did not head for her own rooms, and you found such a fact both curious and hilarious for reasons currently unknown to you.</p><p>Readying yourself for bed was a sobering task, but a task you relished in the luxuries of the First. You had left your curtains open to the night and moonlight now spilled into the room, like the water you could hear lapping below. You flirted with the notion of leaving open the window if only for the soothing sound, but feared the wildlife endemic to the First House. One particularly gigantic dragonfly had assaulted you upon arrival, and you did not want a nocturnal repeat of this fear.</p><p>You stepped up onto your big plush bed to grab the latch of the window; in a grotesque parody of your preparation for the evening, you found yourself gazing right into a pair of cautious golden eyes.</p><p>This time, you hesitated not.</p><p>***</p><p>You stuck the landing with the help of three cleverly placed constructs to cushion your fall. You didn't wait for Gideon's witty remark, but took one of her hands in both of yours. A little bit drunk still, half mad from desire, you pulled her back to circle you on the path. You danced faster without a thousand eyes to critique your form.</p><p>"Slow down," she laughed. The rest of her sentence was lost to the wind as you spun, but it pleased you greatly to catch the hitch in her voice. "You're giving me whiplash here, Nonagesimus." She didn't remove her hand; just rearranged it so yours sat on her shoulders as she lightly held your waist.</p><p>You understood you probably should have stopped letting adrenaline rule you, but the alcohol was now worn off, and something structurally indistinguishable from elation bubbled to the surface to claim its place. You were surprised to find you actually quite enjoyed the feeling as you fell. From devastating heights. For divine women so far out of your league they were stellar specks above you.</p><p>"Whatever for?" you asked, perhaps a touch too guarded. You slowed your steps only because she requested it, and because her laughter chimed bright as the night was dark. You felt in this moment that you might do anything for her, if she would only ask, and still you retracted.</p><p>“These mixed messages, for starters. I mean, you rushed out of that library today faster than a cat on a hot tin roof when you heard- when Abigail explained." She looked down at you then, and you caught a flicker of uncertainty in transit across her face. Was she nervous? Your own face you knew to be impassive, as you had always schooled it in reaction to bad news. You pulled yourself away from her to collect your thoughts away from her warmth. Deflated, she concluded, "uh. Y'know. What we have to do."</p><p>"Does it displease you, Divine Daughter? To carry out a false dalliance with a daughter of the Ninth House?"</p><p>"Fuck, don't call me that - I hate him. I hate him, Harrow, and me and you, we're equals here. There shouldn’t be a Ninth House. Or an Eighth, or a Seventh, or any of them - he’s a coloniser, and a shit one at that. None of us should be here, but we are, a cosmic spill he didn't even attempt to clean up. I’m going to fix his mess."</p><p>She sat with you on the ground, bright eyed from her outburst. Under the starry blanket of the First, you beheld Gideon relax in degrees. The weight of responsibility was a heavy one, and you knew it intimately. A long beat passed before Gideon opened her mouth again. You would have been content to recline in silence, even if you knew what words of comfort would benefit her.</p><p>“Maybe you’re just all action and no talk, Reverend Daughter?” There was a great glint of humour in her white smile.</p><p>In a distant alcove of your mind, you imagined your fingers tracing invisible lines on her arm. She was well defined, sculpted and strong, unlike any necromancer you were familiar with. Quashing the thought violently, you fretted two fingers around your left wrist, then laced your hands together over the brocade of your skirt.</p><p>“Similarly, I must insist you drop such a title.”</p><p>“Apologies, my bone witch.”</p><p>"There must be a plethora of suitors vying for your royal hand... " Coronabeth's shiny smile flashed pettily to mind. Begrudgingly, you could recognise her beauty for what it was; you couldn’t consider her a worthier wife.</p><p>"Many a dickhead, you mean. I hate dancing," Gideon's easy smile was firmly back in place. "This is the first ball I've ever attended in my honour. As it turns out, skeletons make great dance partners."</p><p>"I wouldn't know; the Ninth is entirely too geriatric for balls." (Gideon snickered at your choice of words.) "We're more inclined to celebrate in the chapel."</p><p>You were almost ashamed to admit this, as though it were some great failing of Drearburh. In truth, it was due to your existence that no youthful generation of the Ninth survived long enough to attend a dance. This seemed to you a burden you would always carry.</p><p>"Why are we skirting around this?" She had become softer; your mouth shrivelled to reply. The gold band around her upper arm caught the moonlight and your hands smarted to make contact with the expanse of her skin. You wished language could aid you; she seemed a black hole and a burning sun.</p><p>“Around what, Gideon?” you said in equal quietude. Fear made you condescending. It wasn’t just that she was gorgeous; it was that perceiving the entirety of her seemed an impossible task. A two dimensional photograph of a three dimensional space.</p><p>“This? Us? How miserable you’re going to be. I’m not asking you to love me, Harrow, or even like me that much. It’s not going to be easy to convince people we’re compatible, if we can at all. I mean, what’s our game plan here?”</p><p>As you suspected, your human infatuation was merely child’s play to her.</p><p>“You should take every pleasure you can from our current divestment while you can, Divine Daughter. You may rip me to shreds if it pleases you. I live to serve the Ninth, and once the Ninth is whole again, you will see no more of me. My duty will be consummated and our transaction complete.”</p><p>You knew humanity must seem so trivial to those beyond it. It still hurt to hear of your transience used so crudely as kindling for Gideon’s amusement. You brought yourself to the proud stand of a generation’s last hope, and fled from her like a lamb from her slaughterer to cry yourself to sleep.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>as before, my thanks to bec and to star for beta reading this baby. every minute they spent on this is a tiny fraction of how much i appreciate them.</p><p>attribute all the things u liked to them both, and leave a comment about what you detested for me to ponder &gt;:)</p><p>kudos keep me from failing my degree. please click that button if anything here is doing it for you !!</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>thank you so much for reading !!!</p><p>i hope to update this regularly, likely every weekend! i have a vague outline of the chapters prepared so far.</p><p>kudos and comments keep the fire burning in my soul !!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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